Information drives business. A disaster affecting a data center can cause days or even weeks of unplanned downtime and data loss that could threaten an organization's productivity. For businesses that increasingly depend on data and information for their day-to-day operations, this unplanned downtime can also hurt their reputations and bottom lines. Businesses are becoming increasingly aware of these costs and are taking measures to plan for and recover from disasters.
Two areas of concern when a failure occurs, as well as during the subsequent recovery, are preventing data loss and maintaining data consistency between primary and secondary storage areas. One simple strategy includes backing up data onto a storage medium such as a tape, with copies stored in an offsite vault. Duplicate copies of backup tapes may be stored onsite and offsite.
In many situations, disaster recovery requires the ability to move a software application and associated data to an alternate site for an extended period, or even permanently, as a result of an event, such as a fire that destroys a site. For these more complicated situations, strategies and products to reduce or eliminate the threat of data loss and minimize downtime in the face of a site-wide disaster are becoming increasingly available.
Replication products exist that replicate data in real time to a disaster-safe location. To accommodate the variety of business needs, these replication products should include facilities for remote mirroring of data and replicating data over a wide area or distributed network such as the Internet. Furthermore, different types of storage require different replication methods. Replication products are available for a variety of storage solutions, such as database replication products and file system replication products.
Even more complex problems arise when system administrators need to create and manage multiple copies of business-critical information across the enterprise. The ability to replicate data to remote sites is crucial for disaster recovery and the return of a distributed system to service. Although various database management systems provide some remote replication or backup facilities, a more general service is needed to replicate, for example, database metadata and non-database data, in addition to the database contents. Further exacerbating the problem, each type of storage system usually requires familiarity with specific programming languages or commands to perform backup activities, a skill not often possessed by system administrators.
What is needed is a facility that allows a non-programmer to use and manipulate replicated data without disrupting the data replication process. The facility should be useful for a variety of software applications and storage platforms and not require application- or storage system-specific knowledge in order to perform processing of the replicated data. Preferably, the facility should be easy to use and enable the user to perform multiple processing tasks.